Some More Queer Heroes for Us to Honor

***Our cabin naming project stops taking submission at the end of the day TOMORROW Friday April 22nd. Please get yours in so your queer heroes can be honored***

Tomorrow is the last day we are taking submissions for the Queer Heroes cabin naming project, so we wanted to share a couple more of the inspiring queer heroes who have been shared with us so far. Just as a reminder: some of these amazing heroes will be memorialized by having Groundswell’s cabins named after them, with plaques sharing their stories. We want you to let us know about all the lesser known LGBTQ heroes that should be celebrated by our community. Please help us share the stories of these leaders by telling us about your queer heroes through this simple form.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was an American scholar of queer theory, Chicana cultural theory and feminist theory. She wrote about her experience as a Chicana lesbian growing up in Texas and about her struggle to assimilate to a world full of binaries. Writing was her life and she won many awards for her brilliant works: National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Award, Lesbian Rights Award, and the Sappho Award of Distinction. Once she said, “A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared”. She died in 2004 from complications with diabetes. We honor you Gloria.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was born in a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming. He became a committed civil rights and anti-war activist, fighting the good fight his whole life. He helped found the Gay Liberation Front in Philadelphia and acted as an openly gay delegate to the Black Panther convention that endorsed gay rights. Kiyoshi was also an assistant to Martin Luther King Jr. and took care of his children immediately following the assassination. During the eighties he was part of ACT-UP and helped facilitate distribution of AIDS medication to many people. He also fought indecency laws and bans on medical marijuana all the way to the Supreme Court. He died in 2000 from complications with AIDS. We honor you Kiyoshi.